Throughout much of his writing, Whitehead outlines a critique of what he termed the `bifurcation of nature'. This position divides the world into objective causal nature, on the one hand, with the perceptions of subjects on the other. On such a view, truth lies in a reality external to such subjects and it is the task of science to deliver clear and immediate access to this realm. Further, judgments about this external reality are the province of human subjects and it (...) is the task of philosophy to ascertain the validity or otherwise of these. This article outlines Whitehead's attempts to develop a conception of nature which avoids this premise; it also explains how he offers a way for contemporary theories to construct or engineer abstractions which go beyond notions of social construction or deconstruction. This article argues that not only does Whitehead offer a coherent alternative to such approaches but that the manner in which his major text is written reflects his commitment to the inherently constructed and constructing character of all existence. (shrink)

Most recent writing linking science and literature has concerned itself with challenges to the epistemological status of scientific knowledge in an attempt to demonstrate its contingency, arguing in the more radical efforts that the structures of science are no more than useful fictions. This essay also includes an epistemological comparison between science and literature, but instead of making grand or meta–statements about the nature of knowing generally in the two fields, mine is a much narrower aim. My exploration entails two (...) tasks. First, I provide a close–up look at a particular type of experiment, called the delayed–choice experiment, which clearly reveals the strangeness of the quantum world. In connection with this experiment, I discuss wave functions—mathematical expressions used by physicists to describe quantum behavior and predict the outcome of experiments involving quanta. Second, I look at Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself” focusing on the meaning of the “self” in the poem. My aim is to treat the object of study in each field as a “text” and to assert and demonstrate a parallel in the strategies of thought and response between physicists (“readers”) pondering the meaning and status of a wave function and poem readers pondering the meaning and status of the poem's self. In Whitman's “Song” we find an attempt to understand complex aspects of human experience that are said to transcend ordinary reality, an effort for which I believe there are parallels in the attempts of modern physicists to understand complex, nonintuitive aspects of the subatomic world. While not making the kind of broad claims eschewed above, I do suggest that this focused study has interesting implications since both the wave function and the poem's self force their respective sets of “readers” to confront questions of ultimacy—to consider, that is, epistemological and ontological issues of more than passing interest to students of science as well as those of metaphysics and theology. (shrink)

‘Critical realism’ is to some extent an equivocal term, although its ambiguity has rarely been noticed. The reason for this ambiguity is that the term has constantly been reinvented. Nevertheless, the identity of the label and many family resemblances between its uses allowed for a transfer of thought between these different, although similar concepts, bearing the same name. The purpose of this article is to highlight the similarities and differences between the Barbour family of critical realism in science and religion (...) and Roy Bhaskar's understanding of critical realism, and also to show the existing connections between both approaches. (shrink)

The epistemic stances of both Whitehead and the Book of Changes are founded on the assumption that process is reality; there are important resonances with respect to perception, meaning and significance. Such a process-oriented approach is productive for developing non-representational and non-dualistic theories in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. An exploration of these resonances will further provide an appropriate foundation for dialogue between the philosophy of the Book of Changes and that of contemporary Euro-American (...) philosophy. The important differences between the Book of Changes and Whiteheadian philosophy will also become apparent. (shrink)

The relationship between Employer and Employees is a central one in the world of business. While an important relationship, it is one that is often a source of tension for the workplace. Employers are seemingly in constant mistrust of workers, while workers often look upon their bosses as "less than competent". In the American world of business today, should this "adversarial" relationship continue or should the Employer–Employee Relationship be governed by different rules. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative offers some insights into (...) the way this relationship should be viewed. Also, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has some important points to add to the discussion of this crucial business relationship. A look at the case involving Malden Mills Textile Plant and its CEO Aaron Feuerstein will be used to launch this discussion. (shrink)

While Latour criticises the tautologies of the ‘sociologists of the social’ as an intellectual shortcut, here sociology in the broadest sense is reconsidered as informed by unrecognised theological ideas, inter alia. Durkheim’s classic account of religion, wherein ‘society is God’ is taken as a starting point to explore the intersection of sociology and theology. Thereafter the article examines three social theorists, Elias, Giddens and Boltanski, each of whom attempt a re-casting of sociology, yet rearticulate theological models. In particular, this includes (...) an ontological conception of society, structure or system in terms of over-arching and invisible forces which is derived – inter alia – from religious models of divine will and providential order, which incorporates human choice – or agency in contemporary parlance. Accompanying this ontology is an epistemology of deciphering ‘deeper’ or ‘structural’ or ‘transcendent’ aspects of society by observing trends, cases or culture, akin to divining the providential will by observing its manifestations, which can be conducted in a more critical or forgiving manner. By examining these theological strands which persist in sociology, this aim is not to critically repudiate them, but to recognise the productive contribution of these models of thinking to imagining the ‘social’. (shrink)

Isabelle Stengers anchors the major stake in Whiteheadian philosophy in the notion of constructivism. In doing so, the relation of this philosophy of becoming — the first anti-substantialist principle of which is stated as `principle of process' — to the ideas of vitalist intuition as the self-expression of the world is announced as eminently problematic. This problematizing opening to Whitehead obliges us to think about the constructivist nature of his concepts because of their irreducibility to the expression of facts of (...) experience since they must necessarily function as a machinic articulation of how things become implied in the `ontological principle' of reason; by the same token, it poses at the heart of the analysis the question of the pragmatic-speculative alterity in Whiteheadian constructivism. (shrink)

This thesis philosophically examines, critically discusses, and proposes how a plausible philosophical framework of consciousness and free will should be formulated. This framework takes into account contemporary scientific research on human consciousness and free will and its possible challenges; also it is examined how this framework should be related to theistic beliefs – especially those connected to human and divine consciousness and free will. First, an overview of important research within the natural sciences about the conscious mind is presented together (...) with its challenges to a theistic worldview. Next, questions related to reductive physicalism and dualism as a thesis and an antithesis are discussed. This dialectical approach leads to two lines for possible alternatives: emergence theories and process panpsychism. The subsequent analysis suggests that a form of process panpsychism in combination with a weaker form of emergence is most plausible. After a discussion of some central ideas about determinism and indeterminism, together with a brief overview of standard arguments within the philosophical free will debate, the proposed emergent process panpsychism is related to these standard arguments in the free will debate and scientific research about decision-making. As a result it will be suggested how free will should be understood in relation to the emergent process panpsychism. The consequences of these results are then discussed in relation to a theistic worldview. Here panentheism will be suggested as the most reasonable conception of God. Also, the consequences for divine consciousness, divine action and interaction, the human soul, life before birth and after death, and more briefly a personal relationship with God, theological determinism, omniscience, and omnipotence will be discussed specifically in relation to panentheism in an emergent process panpsychist setting. (shrink)

Recent developments in the natural sciences make a renewed dialogue with the humanities possible. Previously, humanists resisted transferring scientific paradigms into fields like history, fearing materialism and determinism would deprive experience of its meaning and people of their freedom. At the same time, scientists were realizing that deterministic materialism made understanding phenomena like life virtually impossible. Scientists escaped the irony of describing a nature to which they did not belong by also discovering that their knowledge can never be complete and (...) that descriptions of nature at the subatomic level were essentially random. These developments, as Monod said, weakened the “Modern” paradigm sufficiently to make life scientifically possible. To understand how life might actually exist, however, scientists had to move beyond laments about observations losing information and concentrate on how nature creates information. Nature creates information in the process of reducing thermodynamic gradients and stores created information in self-organized systems. Nature thus becomes historical, for it is defined by qualitative changes accumulating over time because of unpredictable contingencies. This paper will explore the possibility that the patterned processes by which nature changes apply in the human realm, where interactions can change people and created information can be stored in self-organized societies. Values, Ethics and Morals are the qualitatively new information stored in social systems. VEMs script the actions structuring societies, demonstrating there is meaning in history and solving the problem of how sequences of events –“chronicles”–become narratives. Moreover, when societies compete, their system-structuring information is tested in the same way natural selection tests DNA. Thus, the succession of social systems suggests there is a meaning of history. The meaning of history need be no more transcendental or intended than Darwinian evolution. But if organs and traits can have biological value without implying design, socially constructed attributes like morality, consciousness, and freedom can be valued without supposing history has an ultimate or eternal purpose. Aspiring to show how the cacophony of historical events becomes a cosmos, a “well-ordered” context in which changes become meaningful, this sketch suggests a new understanding of nature may provide a basis for ethics. (shrink)